Portable toilets, or outhouses, are commonly used in a variety of settings. Construction sites, music and other festivals, parades, weddings, sporting events and other locations that temporarily require toilet facilities commonly have a plurality of outhouses as a necessity. These outhouses are designed for portability, functionality and have a generic and often unsightly appearance. They generally do not enhance the surroundings to which they are applied. Similarly, other structures, often portable buildings, such as storage sheds, dumpsters, outhouses, waste collection structures and/or animal shelters also may appear in locations where another more appropriate or aesthetically pleasing structure may be preferred.
There are many different designs for portable toilets and most innovations to them have related to increased portability and/or structural stability. However, there has been little progress in improving the appearance of portable toilets.
Use of facades on structures has been known since the time of the Romans. They typically include the use of mullions or similar structural elements to attach attractive exterior walls. These methods are typically complex, time consuming and impractically costly for use with a temporary structure that may only be used for a few days. In the case of permanent or semi-permanent structures, it may still be desirable to provide an inexpensive and simple facade that may be removed or replaced without substantial cost or effort. It is well known to use aluminum or other construction material extrusions in attaching a facade to a building, as exemplified by the disclosure and illustration thereof in U.S. Pat. No. 4,809,475 issued to Emmer on Mar. 7, 1989, but this and all other known facade extrusion mountings do not significantly diminish the difficulties in the procedures and complexity in the support constructions required in placing the facade in its operative position in covering relation over a building.
Pertinent to a somewhat lesser extent is the facade mounting described and illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,581,089 issued to MacMillan on Apr. 8, 1986 in which facade panels are attached to a forward extension of a mullion, which is also a mounting technique used in accordance with the present invention, but absent in MacMillan is the use of an extrusion as proposed herein, which greatly simplifies the off-site preparation of the facade panels preparatory to their transportation to the building site for installation.
No patents or disclosures describe an exterior facade suitable for inexpensive, replaceable, interchangeable, and/or temporary application to a structure, including for example a temporary building such as portable toilets. It is therefore broadly an object of the present invention to overcome the complexities and other shortcomings of the prior art of facades so that they are more easily applied to structures including temporary buildings such as portable toilets. More particularly, it is an object to provide a facade manufactured inexpensively.
It is also desirable to provide a facade for buildings such as portable toilets that is easily folded and transported in an uncumbersome manner.
It is also desirable to provide a facade for buildings such as portable toilets that is lightweight and does not apply undue stress to a portable toilet structure.
It is also desirable to provide a facade for buildings such as portable toilets having an aesthetically pleasing appearance.
It is also desirable to provide a facade for buildings such as portable toilets that are replaceable and/or removable and may include advertising display materials.
The description of the invention which follows, together with the accompanying drawings should not be construed as limiting the invention to the example(s) shown and described, because those skilled in the art to which this invention appertains will be able to devise other forms thereof within the ambit of the appended claims.